Have you ever been told before that as a business owner you should show your face more? Does this fill you with dread? Perhaps a video of you speaking about what you do or demoing your craft or skill makes your shiver? Well, this is what I’m hoping to talk you into today, and there are powerful reasons why.
What is personal branding and why is it important?
Personal branding is essentially ‘humanising’ your brand. We live in a digital age where so much of what we do and so many of our purchasing decisions are made online without even meeting the person we do business with. We are still humans though, and humans buy from humans.
You might not be conscious of this, but a lot of the decisions we make to buy are based on emotions. The next time you buy something online, try to note how you feel? Did you buy because you felt connected to the person you bought from? Did you share the same values about something? Did you feel excited? Perhaps you bought from a big company that you’ve bought from before and you know that company provide great customer service or amazingly quick delivery. This is all part of the power of connections and companies building trust and authority online. If you like to geek out on the psychology side of things like me, then have alook at this article to learn more about it.
As a small business owner myself, personal branding has been invaluable to me. I want to let you know all reasons why personal branding can help you elevate your brand and set you apart from the competition, including:
- How personal branding will help your audience relate to you
- Why you shouldn’t be afraid to tell your story
- How to get started in making your brand more personal
How personal branding will help your audience relate to you
So, why should you show your face to your customers or potential customers? Who cares about you? Well, anyone who might be interested in what you have to offer will be. And the decision to make your brand more personal could just be the thing that gets you the sale rather than your closest competitor.
Why you shouldn’t be afraid to tell your story
Your story and where you came from to get to what you’re doing now will add more dimension to your brand and personality. A lot of business owners are afraid or find it too difficult to put into words what their story is as they think people won’t care or it won’t sound good.
One thing I see business owners doing a lot is referring to themself as ‘we’ when actually they work by themselves. There is no harm in being a lone wolf. If you work by yourself and offer a very specialised service, tell people. If you have a team, let your potential clients know. Be totally transparent about who you are and what you do. It’s important to feature this information on an about page on your website.
How to get started in making your brand more personal
Professional photos
To get started, get some images of yourself taken in your workspace, studio or of you working. These don’t have to be professional images to start with but I would recommend that the more professional looking they are the better. If you have some photography skills, great. Use them. If you have a photographer friend, perfect.
Investing in professional photos to create your personal brand will never be money wasted. Showing your face can transform things for your business and having professional photos will give you content to use for years to come. For personal branding photoshoot inspiration, pop over to Pinterest to search for creative ideas and create a board of images that fit in with your visual brand.
Get writing
Pull out a pen and paper and start writing your story down, adding fun facts about you or try adding an extra section to your about page or create a personal post with your story in the caption on Instagram.
Start with video
Create a video. I know, you hate me right now, but you’ll thank me later. We live in a video age. Static images no longer cut it and our attention spans are shorter than ever. Try to catch people’s attention with a video rather than making them read your website copy. This doesn’t have to be a video of you talking if you really can’t stand that. Get creative with showing potential clients how you create your products or how you work with people.
If you’re thinking of creating a video of yourself, to make this easier imagine you’re on a call with a potential client. Speak in exactly the way you would to a potential client. If you make it all too formal you’ll just make yourself nervous. Get creative!
Make sure your authentic self comes through in all your messaging. In addition to photos and video is your messaging. The copy on your website, the captions on your social media and your ads. Some business owners go completely stiff when it comes to writing and tend to go all formal. That’s not your fault. It’s how we were taught to write at school. But nothing is more powerful than just being yourself. In fact, let’s be honest, it’s too much like hard work trying to be anything else!
Don’t worry about being formal in anything you write or say. You’ll attract the right clients and the ones that connect with you by being yourself. People will begin to relate to you and the more this happens, the more likely they are to then become your customers and part of your community.
If you’re anything like me, you’re bound to get overwhelmed with all the things you now need to do to make your brand more personal. I challenge you though to just out one of the above in place and do it soon. If you do, you’ll already be well on your way to building better connections and converting more people into customers because you’re building up trust and authority in your industry.
I’d really love to hear what you have put in place to start making your brand more personal and how this has started to help you. Get in touch to tell me all about it. And if you’d like to learn more about how I can help you build a strong, successful, personal brand find out more here about how you can work with me.
